


Blue

by flight815kitsune



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 14:06:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flight815kitsune/pseuds/flight815kitsune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve liked Iron Man. Tony Stark, well that was slightly more complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue

He enjoyed working with Iron Man. Iron Man was strong and selfless and the perfect partner to watch your back when things went downhill or to bounce ideas off of so that things never did.  
It took longer for Steve to grow accustomed to the personality that was Tony Stark. He had taken the very things he despised in his father and claimed them for his own, reworked them in his own way. Tony was good at doing that: using the barest framework Howard was able to provide and turning it into something familiar but completely new.  
It was hard to accept the fact that they were the same person. It shone through sometimes, rarely, if one knew how to look. Tony would spend days working on something he himself would never use, never accept payment for, that someone had mentioned in passing. And occasionally, whenever Iron Man did something incredibly stupid- like taunting an enemy because he could, or delivering some lame one-liner- it was hard not to see the genius billionaire philanthropist playboy beneath the red and gold.  
Tony bothered him; he was willing to admit that. But he couldn’t blame it all on his personality. He had built up a tolerance to Starks.  
No.   
His reason made him disappointed in himself.  
Iron Man usually had white light. Tony had blue. Steve did not like the blue.  
He knew it was not Tony’s fault. Well, sort of. The file made it clear that it wasn’t exactly a voluntary decision. But when things got dark in the tower and he saw that glow, the impulse to fight the one that wielded it reared up. You can’t fight people with glowing blue weapons for far too long and then just drop it when you happen to wake up from your almost-death. Honestly, if Tony had ever snuck up on him rather than spouting that near-constant babble from the moment he saw him- instinct might have won. And the thought of hurting a member of his own team was terrifying.  
Part of it was that it was always muffled behind other layers of clothing. It made it more suspicious when his brain registered it. A hidden weapon was more dangerous.

 

He shouldn’t be happy when the armor gets damaged in a fight and Tony asks him to come help get it off. A piece of metal is wedged in the dented armor around Tony’s shoulder. He refused to go to medical, pulling up information from the suit to prove that he was fine. He was barely bleeding, the suit had taken the damage. He just needed a hand to get it off. Preferably someone strong enough to pull or bend, but patient enough not to completely ruin the suit. He needed someone who could force, but who would listen.  
Thor’s…enthusiasm left Steve as the only real option.   
So Tony got out of all but the chest, back, and left shoulder. The remaining pieces were too damaged or too connected to the places with damage to be removed.  
Tony just pointed and explained what needed to come off and in what order.  
By bending part of the shoulder a fraction of an inch, he got the back off. The piece of metal punched through the chestpiece, the shrapnel had to go before the armor could. And it really wasn’t budging.   
“Okay. New plan.” He clapped. Found the tool he needed from underneath a pile of wires. He handed the pliers over. He laid down on the workshop floor. “Grab and pull. If you brace yourself against my armor and the floor, it should give you more force. I am not in the mood to cut this off today.”  
Right. Pulled, wiggled. Finally able to get a good enough grip and enough force to make progress. When the piece was free, he stumbled backwards.  
Tony was able to work himself free from the rest. He left it on the ground and brushed himself off. His shirt was torn and there was a decent scratch on the left upper part of his chest, too far to the side to be his collarbone.  
Steve was close. Tried to survey the damage. Tony moved to sit on a tabletop. “First aid kit’s over there, Cap.”  
He came back with that little white box.  
Tony tried to eye up the injury, but it’s placement made that awkward. Pulled off the damaged clothing. “You mind? It’s in a rough spot.”   
“No.” Closed the gap. Alcohol and gauze and medical tape. It didn’t need stitches, Just had to make sure it didn’t get infected. A series of tapping noises seemed to echo in the quiet. Tony’s fingertips were drumming against the reactor. Steve kept glancing at the glow that wouldn’t leave his peripheral vision.  
“For cryin’ out loud, if you’re gonna look, just look.”  
He was pink. Staring was rude. But curiosity was already winning this one.  
Steve let his gaze move the short distance and stared. Mapped the lines, the way the glow cast over metal, scars, and flesh. Tony’s fingers stopped, and he wished they would have kept going both to mess with the light and to keep the silence at bay.   
Because Tony wasn’t talking, and that was never a good thing.  
It didn’t take a genius to see how complicated the design was. Nothing like the fairly straightforward battery of the weapons engineered before.  
“With a box of scraps?” He was awed, but it must have sounded like disbelief.   
“Are you doubting my amazing skills, Steve?” When he laughed, it rose and fell like it belonged there. Like it had been there from the moment he was born. “You know this isn’t the first one, right?” He started on with the technobabble about how this one differed from the ones before it and that was easily pushed aside so that he could study this more fully. Tony was talking with his hands again. Gesturing a flow of energy that very few people would get, and Steve wasn’t one of them.  
He was too busy studying it to even try. This was what kept Tony alive. Something that small. He wondered if it’s warm or cold, and decided to just touch.  
Put his hand over it and Tony, who had apparently been very absorbed in his discussion to the lab, Jumped. Capitalization entirely necessary for how violent the reaction is.   
He also had a wrench about two inches away from Steve’s skull.  
But he stopped. Gulped, put the weapon down. You could see the battling words in his mind. He edged off the table, was walking backwards through his lab. “If you could, uh, try not do that, like ever, that’d be great.” He was running, and Steve was following.  
He got away as soon as the team was able to redirect Steve’s attention. This was not hard to do, because Hawkeye and Thor were having a “friendly debate” over pasta. He came back as though nothing had happened, new shirt on.   
Steve wasn’t going to push. He went to his room and grabbed his charcoal. That small encounter had given him something, and he intended to capture it.  
He flipped through his sketchbook, past pages of Natasha and New York, snowy mountains and pigeons, to get to a blank page.  
Many rough sketches later, it was still eluding him. He wanted to draw Tony, now that he had been given more of the big picture.   
Tony was… the old and the new and the future, humanity and technology, he was not a hero, and at the same time he was the biggest one on the team. A contradiction. Abstract art wasn’t Steve’s thing, but it was quickly feeling like that would be the only way to achieve any success in capturing the warring elements. Crimson clashing with blue.  
Color. He needed color. Tony Stark was not a black and white person.  
Pastels were much better. Cold steel, discarded armor the color of flames, tanned skin, and that blue over it all. Dulling some things, providing contrast for others.  
This one would be kept.  
There’s a knock at his door.  
“Come in.” Added a bit more shadow there.  
Tony pouted.   
Steve smiled. “You knocked.”  
“Yeah. About earlier.”  
“…What about it?”  
“I’m not good at stuff like this.”  
Cogs turned. “…If this is about the wrench, I get it.”  
A raised eyebrow. “Okay?”  
“I know about instinct. How a person can just react when their life is in danger. I touched your…heart. I didn’t mean to scare you, but it happened. No harm, no foul.” He shrugged. “You’ve scared me before.”  
“I scared Captain America.” Disbelieving. “And how did I manage that feat?” He sat down on the bed.  
Steve moved the art to the side. It wasn’t done yet. “Scared may be a strong choice of words.”  
“Oh, no, you aren’t backing out of things that easily. How have I scared you? Is this about the toaster, because seriously, that was all Thor.”  
“Tony.”  
“We’re not talking ‘oh, Iron Man, you could have been melted/frozen/dismembered’ kind of fear, right? Because I’d hate to think I worry you to death-“  
“You glow.”  
“-and it would be horrible to deal with Fury if you ended up with an ulcer” He paused. Looked down at his own chest like it was something new. “Yeah, I noticed that.”  
“You glow blue.”  
“And…? If that’s supposed to make the pieces fall into place, it’s not. I’m a genius, but I don’t have enough information to work with, here.”  
Steve sighed. “Hydra weapons, the ones that used the Tesseract, the ones that made people disintegrate into nothing. They glowed blue.”  
“Oh. “  
“If my hearing wasn’t…“ He shook his head. “I’m learning to register the differences faster.”  
“The differences?”  
“Your light is whiter. Less turquoise. And the technology that uses it. Hydra had it’s own style. You have a style all your own.” A hint of pink found it’s way back.  
“Oh, now you know I can’t drop it. What else?”   
“Yours is warmer.”  
“Warmer?”  
“I think it is. I didn’t really get a chance to tell. Theirs… maybe it’s just an illusion from the amount of blue. Their weapons always felt cold.”  
“So you touched it to see if it was warm.”   
“Yeah. I should have asked-”  
“You drew this?” He leaned back to stare at the failed crumpled sketches. Sketches of himself, arc reactor and all. “Have you thought about a career in industrial espionage?” He tried to smooth out the wrinkles. “These are scarily accurate.” He studied it carefully before that smirk took over. “And what is that?” He leaned half over the bed and half over Steve to get the more colorful drawing.   
“That isn’t done.”  
“I am going to take this and hang it up. Or maybe put it on the Christmas cards. Happy Whatever from Stark Industries. You didn’t get a sense of if it was warm? I can have Pepper commission you for advertisements and company memos and cards. And the Stark Expo. We should have you do something for that.”His voice softened with “Something with my dad.” But was back to normal for “Really, though, I may have to try and get you to look at some of the competition. You can draw. We should just send you in, I mean who would refuse Captain America, and you can come back and show what they’re doing. No need for hidden cameras or anything. We can use those skills for totally-not-evil. For the betterment of mankind.” He pulled his shirt off in a slick move any playboy would have mastered. Grabbed Steve’s hand and placed it over the metal and glass. ”Should send you to study Richard’s stuff. Bastard is always hiding something. And I wasn’t scared. I trust you with my life. Kind of have to with our line of work. I would love to just take a look at some ideas of his and give them the opportunity that they deserve to thrive.”  
It wasn’t cold. It wasn’t hot or anything either. Just body-temperature. And of course that made sense if it was in his body. It was strange to touch. It seemed to hum.  
It wasn’t like the Hydra weapons. It was completely Tony.  
“Thanks.” He removed his hand. He had the information he wanted.  
“No problem, Capsicle. What’s the verdict?”  
“Warm enough.” He tore the artwork off and offered it.   
Tony pulled his shirt back on, eyed the sketch. “You said it wasn’t finished.”  
“I can start another one.” He laid it on the bed.  
Tony picked it up, started to leave the room. “Think over the Richards thing.”

He had a smile on his face. If he could like Tony Stark, he could learn to like Tony’s little blue light.


End file.
